


Through the Cracks

by storyplease



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Writing Prompt, never underestimate the incompetence and laziness of evil, short fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 13:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11555868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyplease/pseuds/storyplease
Summary: [WP] Everyone on Earth was infected with a disease with no cure. The only thing keeping humanity alive is a drug that fights the disease, but can't kill it. When you run out of money to keep buying your daily dose, you notice something. You're not dead.





	Through the Cracks

It wasn't your fault that you stopped taking your daily pill.

It started with your job transfer. The paperwork got lost, or perhaps there was a clerical error (it aways starts with a clerical error, right?). Everyone more or less works a job that is given to them by necessity, as everyone must work at a job to pay for the pill, which keeps everyone alive. "Everyone provides utility," is the motto of the combined Earth society these days, after all.

Then there was that business with the garbage chute. Someone was pouring grease down the garbage chute again, which caused corrosion and eventually made it malfunction in such a way that it interfered with your automatic mail slot, sending your mail down to the dumpster in the basement instead. You always meant to go down and get it, but was rather easy to get distracted by the TV or your phone.

So perhaps you could be forgiven for not receiving the multiple warnings entreating you to refill your pill supply sent to you by the Earth State Department of Total Financial Solvency.

And, wouldn't you know it? Even the in-person visits from the Bureau of Medical Overseers was unable to contact you at home. Each day, you went to work as usual, not realizing that you weren't being paid. Your bosses were in meetings and deadlines were always looming anyway. There was more than enough to do. You came home, ate your dinner and then went to bed early, as you normally do on a week night. Your upstairs neighbor snores terribly, leading you to use noise-canceling headphones that were so helpfully featured on Amazon during the previous holiday season. They even included instructions and suggested uses- noisy upstairs apartment neighbors being one of them. So helpful, this modern age, yes?

Unfortunately also very unhelpful when it comes to agents knocking on your door while you are in the throes of an uninterrupted ten hours of sleep.

Now, normally, it's protocol to kick down your door, but wouldn't you know it, it was their last house call of the day, and the two of them ended up deciding to call it a day rather than fill out endless paperwork for knocking down a civilian's door and entering the premises. The next time, a different pair reached the same conclusion, and by that time, you hadn't noticed that your automatic daily pill dispenser hopper was dangerously low. Clear plastic is more expensive than opaque, you see, and they'd created the system to be perfect, so no one would ever run out of pills due to the four-deep system of pill distribution and reminders.

And so, it catches you off guard when you wake up to your morning alarm, sit up, grab the automatically-poured glass of room-temperature water, and place your hand under the automatic pill dispenser, only to hear a disappointing whirring noise.

Your eye twitches involuntarily. You've never heard that whirring noise before. You try again. Another whir. And again. WHIRRRRR. It rolls its plastic tongue at you as though it's blowing a raspberry in your face.

That's silly, though. Inanimate objects are not real...are they?  _Could_  they be?

The thought has never come to you before. The idea that you might describe a mindless piece of machinery in an empathetic manner would have been foreign to your mind before this very moment.

You shrug. Already, you feel as though you've forgotten something, but the day isn't getting any earlier. You stand up, stretch and get dressed.

Again, your unluckiness knows no bounds, for as you grab your customary bowl of cereal and take a seat at the kitchen table, you end up sitting on the television remote, accidentally turning it on to your usual channel. Rubbing your sore bottom with a muttered curse, you grab the remote and realize that there are a bunch of buttons all over the remote. Honestly, the thought has never struck you before, but you wonder to yourself just what all these other numbers and channels might hold.

You push the button. A green 04 shows up in the corner of the screen. The same channel flashes and continues on. You frown and go to the next channel. It shows a 05 in the corner, but is otherwise the same. You start flipping channels a second at a time and realize that even as the numbers increase, the channel's contents are all the same.

Why haven't you noticed this before?

You stare at the cable bill that's attached to your bulletin board. There's a list of channels there and their purported "Best Value" as per usual, but as you scroll along, you find yourself realizing that this is most definitely a lie.

You frown. You seem to be doing that a lot more than usual. Perhaps more than ever in your entire life. If the television is a lie, then what about the contents on the television? What about those commercials that proclaimed that sugary cereal do not in fact lead to cavities and that brushing one's teeth is a silly time wasting habit? Perhaps you do not actually have terrible, cavity prone teeth!

You find yourself pondering over your frosted corn cereal, the taste overly sweet and boring in your mouth. You begin thinking about what it might be like to cut up some fruit on top and add a few thin slices of almonds. That might be healthier, after all.

Of course, just then, your alarm goes off- it's time to go to work. You put on your jacket and head out the door. Your mind is reeling as it begins to connect thoughts that used to be contained in separate, safe little bubbles. Your pill, or rather, lack thereof- it started with that.

Your mind clicks and churns after such a long time at rest, and you begin to wonder- truly WONDER. Wow. It's been years, possibly decades, since you last felt that complex twist of emotion surging through your brain. It overwhelms you with possibility as you buckle your seatbelt and head out to your morning commute.

The woman on the radio is talking about a magical new treatment where people give her money and magically become wealthy and beautiful forever. Your mind snags on her words and you shake your head. "What idiots would believe such drivel," you say derisively, switching off the radio dial for the first time in...wow...you can't really remember how long it's been since you didn't listen to the radio lady and her miracle cure show.

"Remember to take your piiiillll! Or diiiiie a horrible deaaaath!" sings your phone from your pocket as someone calls you, and you wonder why, for the love of all that is not horribly annoying, you would ever let that be your ringtone.

You click your phone on silent, a clarity filling your eyes as you turn off the freeway three stops before you usually exit.

You need something you haven't needed for a long, long time.

You need  _answers._


End file.
